EPITAPH ON ELIZABETH L. H.

WOULDST thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.

MARBLE, weep! for thou dost cover
A dead beauty underneath thee,
Rich as nature could bequeath thee:
Grant, then, no rude hands remove her!
All the gazers on the skies

Read not in fair heaven's story
Expresser truth or truer glory

Than they might in her bright eyes.

Rare as wonder was her wit,

And, like nectar, overflowing;
Till Time, strong by her bestowing,
Conquer'd hath both life and it :

How near to good is what is fair,
Which we no sooner see,

But with the lines and outward air
Our senses taken be.

We wish to see it still, and prove
What ways we may deserve;

We court, we praise, we more than love,
We are not grieved to serve.

FAME.

HER house is all of echo made,
Where never dies the sound;
And as her brows the clouds invade,
Her feet do strike the ground.

ODE TO HIMSELF.

WHERE dost thou careless lie
Buried in ease and sloth?

Knowledge that sleeps, doth die;
And this security,

It is the common moth

That eats on wits and arts, and so destroys them both.

Are all the Aonian springs

Dried up? Lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius' harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings?

Or droop they as disgraced,

To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies defaced?

If hence thy silence be,

As 'tis too just a cause,—

Let this thought quicken thee;
Minds that are great and free

Should not on fortune pause;

'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.

CHIVALRY.

THE house of Chivalry decayed,

Or rather ruined seems, her buildings laid

Flat with the Earth, that were the pride of Time;
Those obelisks and columns broke and down,
That strook the stars, and raised the British Crown
To be a Constellation.

When to the structure went more noble names
Than to the Ephesian Temple lost in flames,
When every stone was laid by virtuous hands.

SONG.

THE faery beam upon you,
And the stars to glister on you,
A moon of light

In the noon of night,

Till the fire-drake hath o'ergone you :

The wheel of Fortune guide you,

The boy with the bow beside you

Run aye in the way, till the bird of day
And the luckier lot betide you.

TRANSLATION OF COWLEY'S EPIGRAM ON FRANCIS DRAKE.

THE stars above will make thee known,

If man were silent here;

The sun himself cannot forget

His fellow-traveller.

NATURE.

How young and fresh am I to-night,

To see't kept day by so much light,

And twelve of my sons stand in their Maker's sight!
Help, wise Prometheus, something must be done,
To show they are the creatures of the sun.

That each to other

Is a brother,

And Nature here no stepdame, but a mother.
Come forth, come forth, prove all the numbers then,
That make perfection up, and may absolve you men

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